Panama ratifies Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

Panama deposited its instrument of ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) with the Secretary-General of the United Nations on 23 March 1999. Panama is the thirty-second State signatory to have ratified the Treaty.

Panama is contributing a radionuclide station at Panama City to the International Monitoring System to verify compliance with the CTBT. The site survey is under way and the station is in the 1999 programme for possible capital investment.

Under the CTBT, an international monitoring system of 321 stations, using four complementary technologies, is being established to record data necessary to verify compliance with the Treaty. The stations will be capable of registering vibrations from a nuclear explosion underground, in the seas and in the air, as well as detecting radioactive debris released into the atmosphere. The monitoring stations will transmit, via satellite, the data to the International Data Centre (IDC) within CTBTO PrepCom in Vienna, where the data will be used to detect, locate and characterize events. These data and other IDC products will be made available to the signatory States for final analysis.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty bans any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion anywhere in the world. Drafted at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and adopted by the General Assembly on 10 September 1996, the Treaty was opened for signature on 24 September 1996 at the United Nations in New York. Panama was one of the 71 States that signed the Treaty on that day.